HIGH COURT ADVOCATE HEMANT KUMAR HAD SOUGHT COMPLETE INFORMATION UNDER RTI ACT FROM DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
Face2News/Chandigarh
Two months ago on Nov 1, 2022, the Appointments Division, Department of Justice, Ministry of Law and Justice, Government of India issued a Notification appointing Kuldeep Tiwari, Gurbir Singh, Deepak Gupta, Amarjot Bhatti, Manisha Batra, Harpreet Kaur Jeewan, Sukhvinder Kaur, Sanjeev Berry, Vikram Aggarwal as Additional Judges of Punjab & Haryana High Court for a period of two years with effect from the date they assume charge of their respective offices. However, the tenth viz. Ritu Tagore has been appointed as Additional Judge till 28 Sep 2024 i.e. when she would attain the age of 62 years as is fixed for superannuation of a High Court Judge.
The catch is that after appointment of the aforementioned ten Additional Judges, the strength of total Judges means Permanent and Additional has been increased to 66 i.e. 39 Permanent and 27 Additional. However, the total approved/sanctioned strength of Judges is 85 i.e. 64 Permanent and 21 Additional.
Meanwhile, since the current strength of Additional Judges in Punjab & Haryana High Court has got raised to 27, six up from approved strength of 21, Hemant Kumar, an Advocate at Punjab and Haryana High Court on Nov 1 itself filed an online RTI application with Department of Justice seeking complete information pertaining to appointment of aforementioned 10 Additional Judges which increased the strength of total Additional Judges in Punjab& Haryana High Court to 27 i.e. 17 erstwhile ( previous) and 10 fresh/new notwithstanding the fact that the total number of approved posts of Additional Judges in this High Court is only 21 i.e. 6 less than the posts of Additional Judges which has now got increased to 27.
Additionally, he sought the information pertaining to current sanctioned/approved posts of Additional Judges in Punjab and Haryana High Court being raised from 21 to 27 or more, if any, till date.
(SUBHEAD)Hemant did not receive any sort of reply or information from the Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) in the Department of Justice within the statutory mandated time period of 30 days till Dec 1. However, he still waited for more time. On 30th of Dec, when he was about to institute/file the First Appeal in this matter on the ground of no reply received within the stipulated period of one month, he received a one liner reply which mentions that the current sanctioned strength of Punjab and Haryana High Court is 85 (Permanent 64 and Additional 21).
Hemant is highly surprised over this short reply as the same does not relates to the what he sought under RTI i.e. complete information pertaining to increase of strength of Additional Judges in Punjab and Haryana High Court from 21 (as is the approved strength) to 27 (as is the current strength as on date). He has now filed the First Appeal against the denial of the requisite information before First Appellate Authority (RTI) in the Department of Justice.
Hemant further told that as on date of the 27 Additional Judges, apart from the 10 as appointed recently on Nov 1 whose term as such is till Nov 2024, the tenure as Additional Judge in case of Vikas Bahl is till 24 May, 2023 whilst in case of Vikas Suri, Sandeep Moudgil, Vinod Sharma (Bhardwaj), Pankaj Jain and Jasjit Singh Bedi the same is till 27 Oct 2023. Further, in case of Nidhi Gupta, Sanjay Vashisth, Tribhuvan Dahiya, Namit Kumar, Harkesh Manuja, Aman Choudhary, Naresh Singh Shekhawat, Harsh Bunger, Jagmohan Bansal, Deepak Manchanda and Alok Kumar Jain, the date of expiry of their present term as Additional Judge is till 15 Aug 2024.
In normal circumstances, an Additional Judge is appointed as Permanent Judge of the High Court on completion of two years of his tenure as former. But there have been cases where this period of two years was increased or decreased i.e. regarding appointment of Additional Judge as Permanent Judge. Also, there has also been a case in 2021 when one Girish Agnihotri who was appointed Additional Judge in Oct, 2019 was not even made Permanent Judge in Oct, 2021.